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This is Scientific American's 60-second Science, I'm Christopher Intagliata.
这里是科学美国人——60秒科学系列，我是克里斯托弗·因塔利亚塔。
If you’ve ever hosted a mouse as a houseguest, you know they can be incredibly clever at finding your food. And that makes sense.
如果你家里曾经有过老鼠，你就会知道它们很聪明，善于寻找食物。而且这是有道理的。
“They had to become better in traits like problem solving because we became better at hiding our food from them.”
它们必须更善于解决问题，因为我们变得更善于把食物藏起来，避免它们发现。
Anja Guenther is with the Max Planck Institute in Germany.
安雅·冈瑟就职于德国马克斯·普朗克研究所。
She says that battle of the minds has made mice craftier over time.
她表示，随着时间的推移，与人类斗智使老鼠变得更加狡猾。
“The longer the mice lived with humans, the better they are at problem-solving.”
“老鼠和人类生活的时间越长，它们解决问题的能力就越强。”
You see, there are more than a dozen subspecies of house mice worldwide.
你看，全世界家鼠有十几个亚种。
And each began cohabitating with humans at different times in our evolutionary history. For example, “Mus musculus domesticus.”
在我们进化史的不同时期，每种老鼠都开始了与人类共存的生活。比如, “家鼠。”
It began raiding human pantries around 12,000 years ago.
大约12000年前，它开始袭击人类的食品储藏室。
“Mus musculus musculus.”
“沙漠野小鼠。”
Our relationship with them began some 8,000 years ago.
我们与它们的关系始于大约8000年前。
“And Mus musculus castaneus.”
“金浅黄小鼠。”
That one is a relative newcomer which began cohabitating only 3,000 to 5,000 years ago.
这是一个相对较新的物种，它们在3000到5000年前才开始与人类共同生活。
And that spread in evolutionary life histories among the three groups gave Guenther’s team an opportunity.
这种老鼠在生命演化历史中扩散，它们组成了三组实验老鼠，给了冈瑟的团队一个机会。
They gathered 150 mice—with constituents from all three groups—and tested them with seven different food puzzles.
他们收集了150只老鼠——组成了三组——并对它们进行了7个不同的食物谜题测试。
Each puzzle was baited with a mealworm, which the mice could only get by pushing or pulling a lid, for example, or extracting a ball of paper from a tube or my favorite opening the window of a Lego house.
每个谜题都有一个黄粉虫幼虫作为诱饵，老鼠只能通过推拉盖子，或从管子里取出一个纸团，或者是我最喜欢的--打开乐高房子的窗户来获得黄粉虫幼虫。
And they found that the longer a mouse variety had lived with humans, the more likely it was to solve these food puzzles.
他们发现，与人类生活在一起的时间越长，就越有可能解决这些食物谜题。
“So, basically, what we are left at, with trying to explain these results that we see, is that the mice really developed higher enhanced cognitive abilities while living with humans.”
“所以，基本上，我们所做的就是试图解释我们观察到的这些结果，即老鼠在与人类生活在一起时，确实发展了更高的认知能力。”
The results appear in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
研究结果发表在《英国皇家学会学报B》上。
As the human footprint on the globe expands, Guenther says it’s more important than ever to understand how we influence animal minds to learn, why some creatures, like housemice, adapt—while others simply die out.
随着人类在地球上的足迹不断扩大，冈瑟表示，现在比以往任何时候都更重要的是要了解我们如何影响动物的思维，从而了解为什么有些生物，比如家鼠，能够适应环境，而另一些则干脆灭绝了。
Thanks for listening for Scientific American's 60-second Science. I'm Christopher Intagliata.
谢谢大家收听科学美国人——60秒科学。我是克里斯托弗·因塔利亚塔。
文章为可可英语翻译，未经授权请勿转载！
